Sidney Poitier and Lilia Skala in a scene from the 1963 motion picture "Lilies of the Field." Poitier plays a handyman helping nuns led by Mother Maria (Skala). / USA TODAY

by Bill Goodykoontz, Gannett Chief Film Critic

by Bill Goodykoontz, Gannett Chief Film Critic

It has been 50 years since Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to win an Academy Award for best actor.

He won for his role in Lilies of the Field (he had also been nominated for best actor for The Defiant Ones five years earlier), and though it was a tremendous breakthrough in terms of diversity, it's also worth noting that when Ann Bancroft gave him a kiss on the cheek when presenting him with the Oscar, some people were offended.

That was the world in 1964, the world in which Poitier and everyone else of color lived. Whatever accomplishments they enjoyed did not erase the reality of racism that surrounded them.

And though it would be nice to say that Poitier's win brought down the barriers, at least to some extent, it would be 38 years before another African-American actor won a best-actor Oscar: Denzel Washington, for his turn as a bad cop in 2001's Training Day.

Since then, both Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker have won; Halle Berry won for best actress the same year Washington took home his best-actor award.

Hattie McDaniel won long before any of them, chosen as best supporting actress in 1940 for Gone With the Wind, albeit in a stereotypical maid role of little influence on white perceptions of blacks.

It would be easy, then, to discount Poitier's win as also being a kind of fluke. But it wasn't. Instead, it's one of the most important moments in Academy Awards history, and Poitier is one of black film's most important stalwarts.

Why?

Because, at that time, Poitier was black film. In 1967 alone, he starred in To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. All of these films dealt with Poitier's race head-on, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in particular, as Poitier played the fiancé of a white woman (Joey Drayton), who introduces him to her parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

We are not exactly a colorblind society today. Nor is Hollywood. Yet things are far more diverse than they were, particularly in the kinds of roles offered actors of color. Often, still, they are relegated to playing servants, criminals and the like.

Poitier, in fact, was sometimes criticized for taking roles that too closely hewed to the idea of the "good" black man. Certainly that is one way to describe the idealistic doctor he played in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. It is especially easy, years later, to look at the role as a kind of liberal wish-fulfillment.

But consider this: In 1967, when the film came out, interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states. In that context, even if Poitier's character is somewhat whitewashed, if you'll excuse the expression, it is still a remarkable advance.

As was his Oscar win for Lilies of the Field. In this film, his character, a handyman who single-handedly builds a church for a group of nuns in Arizona, is altruistic in the extreme, which again made it somewhat susceptible to claims that he was simply playing an idealized version of a black man, one whom white audiences could tolerate as the protagonist in a major film.

So what? Doesn't it beat playing a thief or a gangster? Even if it tips the scales a little far in one direction, is it not, at long last, a step toward righting the scales?

This was recognition, finally, that Poitier's work stood shoulder to shoulder with actors of any race. And while it seems absurd in 2014 to have to say that, in 1964, that was part of the argument any actor of color had to win to be considered an equal.

Poitier has since served as an ambassador and has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has also directed films, mostly comedies, none of which have had the mainstream appeal of his earlier films in which he acted.

That's too bad. And it's too bad that he isn't brought up more in the conversation of great actors and that his Oscar win, now a half-century old, isn't properly recognized for its impact.

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Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic is the chief film critic for Gannett. Read his blog at goodyblog.azcentral.com. Facebook: Goody on film. Twitter: goodyk.